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Road Back To China
--Real Experience & Discussion
* Topic: Road Back to China --- Real Experience & Discussion
* Date: Feb 24th, 2002
* Time: 1:15 – 3:45 pm
* Place:117, McCullough building, Stanford University
* Panelists: Julice Chen, Eric Ho, Mingming Huang, Steven Xi, Xin Ye
Our Honored Panelists: (Alphabetical Order)
Mr. Chen was co-founder and CEO of the b2b commodity chemical
exchange Chemease based in Shanghai, China. He is currently
managing OEM outsourcing projects for Cisco Systems. He received
his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Mr. Ho is the founder and CEO of AproB2B, a leading global
B2B marketplace creator based in Silicon Valley, Taipei and SuZhou.
Mr Ho has over 17 years of global technology and startup
experience. He currently operates AproB2B in China.
Mr. Huang was the co-founder and CEO of an Internet startup
based in Shanghai. Before his start-up, he worked for HP for many
years as Channel Sales manager. He is currently a product marketing
manager in Siebel system. He received his MBA from University of
Chicago.
Mr. Xi was the CEO and Co-Founder of ClubCiti, one of the
leading online auction communities for Greater China. The company
was sold to Guardian Auctions. Prior to his Internet venture, he
spent six years in investment banking. He is working for an venture
capital firm in Palo Alto.
Mr. Ye is CEO and co-founder of Hansky.com, a software company
based in Beijing, China. He was the CTO of leading Internet portal
Sohu and successfully led the technology group in achieving 90
million page views per day and many award-winning products.
Mr. Ye had over 14 years working experience in Silicon Valley.
(More about panelist is available here......)
Back-to-China is a very hot topic recently. We have seen a few
seminars and presentations already. Is there any BLACK AND WHITE
thing in the long run to pursue the right and solid road back to
China? Am I ready? And how do I know if I am ready? How do I
prepare? Shall I create my own glory of being an entrepreneur or
enjoy being a white collar? Can I found a well-paid, comfortable
white-collar job? And how? Being a “Silicon Valleyer”, what are
my advantages and disadvantages?
SVSoftware is going to touch it at a different angle. Touch it from
another angle, start from people like you and me! No governmental
propaganda, no reps of big companies in China, we invite our peers,
silicon valleyers, and CEOs of China start-ups… We invited
speakers who just like you and me. Well, maybe a little bit ahead
of us… they started or involved in starting their business in
China; they operated or is still leading the company in China;
they funded or involved in successful funding; they work hard and
simply THEY WERE THERE. Hear what they say? what did they get?
Happiness? Or maybe bitterness? Cheerful result? Or maybe not?
Who knows, but let’s find out? Get closer look to their stories,
life and opinions, you may agree, or maybe not…… Interactive
discussion, don't just listen, what do you think? Be prepared!
Findings from the workshop:
Road back to China could always be a long term investment. No
quick money, be willing to invest, and be patient, think long term.
At least two of the speakers are from top tier B-schools in US,
however, China is still their choice for entrepreneurships.
Have a sound business model, spend time to find out what you
really want to do instead of chasing fads.
Be focus. For a startup, no matter how much capital it has, focus
is very important. Focus on product, customer group, and execution.
Setting up offices all over the place or trying to be everything
to everyone won't work.
A good partner is very important for startup success. It would be
great if you could find a partner from your college classmates or
your colleagues. This is because you can understand each other
after you have known them or worked together for a long time. Both
Steven and Julice mentioned about finding partners. Steven said it
would be better even necessary for founders to know each other
very well before partnering. Julice enjoyed his time working with
his partners who was his classmates and good friends from college.
Government connections are very important, however, if the
business is not sound, more connections won't save you. However,
even speakers differ in this topic. Some think it's very important,
some think you can do without it. Other than that, connections in
general are the keys. The connections and network in China helped
them on not only awarding the contract, but also recruiting best
qualified people. It was amazing for a small startup to recruit 60
top university graduates in 2 months.
The other interesting question is about how people in China look
at those returned from oversea (Hai Gui Pai). The answers are
straightforward. Don't expect yourself to be differentiated with
others only because you're returned from US. So a more important
question is how we should position ourselves. Those who are
willing to ride a bicycle to work have the biggest chance to
succeed.
Wrap-up for organizers:
The smaller scale of the event (maybe due to the small size of the
classroom?) creates an atmosphere that brings the speaker and the
audience closer, and more interactive. This may be something we
can differentiate ourselves from other organization and events. We
want the audience/members to have a close interactive session.
All our speakers are very frank and down-to-earth when talking
about their past experiences. They openly talked about their
failure (if any), their frustrations. I guess most people know the
success stories already, from news or from dinner gatherings. What
is more valuable to the audience is the reality in China's
business environment.
This time, all speakers are in internet/b2b area. It will be
better if we could have a wider range; or, we could have this
event to be titled as internet/b2b in china discussion. Just my
opinion here.
Attendance estimate and room size: we had too many attendants, and
too small a room. I know it is impossible to be accurate. What
should we do to improve?
It was good to have some different voices between the speakers to
stir up some discussion, and we had that in our event.
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Possible questions that we may discuss:
* What profession or industry is the lovest for oversea
professionals and Chinese government?
* How's the software industry in China? its trend? future?
* Must I have connections to do business in China? Can I do well if
my products is really good even though I don't have connections?
* Shall I go back to start my own business and become an
entrepreneur, or just find a comfortable job, becomes an white
collar?
* Can I find a high level position there? How and what shall I do?
* How's the pay in China? what is the pay structure? Some examples?
* What are the major costs for a software company? what are the
fees, hidden and abovetable?
* What are the stuffs that I have to pay attention to? If you were
me, what are things you definitely not going to do and must do?
* Any difficulties in get business running? Hard to deal with
business relationship?
* What's VC status in China? How about their funds status? Can I
get Chinese VC invested? Cons and pros of being investing by
Chinese VCs?
* I heard that lots of people get their seed money or first round
from a Chinese public company, what do you think of that? How
about comparing with Venture Capitals?
Background:
In recent years, going back to China to start up business has
become the hottest topic among the overseas Chinese. The Chinese
economy has been growing at a steady pace, and China will be the
host to the 2008 Olympics. It is practically the only bright spot
in the struggling world economy. Many Chinese from the silicon
valley have already joined the growing army of hi-tech
entrepreneurs who started business in China. More Chinese are
actively thinking whether and when they will join. Most of them
has been living and working in the U.S. for many years, and knows
very little about the conditions in China. They want to get to
know more about the hi-tech business conditions, infrastructures,
and talent market in China, through those who have the first hand
experiences. Many of them have heard two contradicting opinions,
i.e. it is the best timing to go back to China for hi-tech career,
or, do not do it, or you will regret about it later. All these
motivated us to organize such an event, in which we will invite
experienced entrepreneurs to share with us their valuable knowledge
and experiences with the high-tech community in the silicon valley.
We will focus on the aspects of high technologies, and try to
avoid discussion about political or social conditions.
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